Website Maintenance Costs in Australia: What You Should Actually Pay Each Year

Launching a website is the start, not the finish. Here's what keeping one running actually costs, so there are no surprises.

The essentials

• Domain name: around $20 to $40 a year for a .com.au
• Hosting or platform fees: roughly $10 to $60 a month for most small business sites
• Email: often a separate Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 subscription
• SSL certificate: free on most modern platforms

Maintenance tasks

Platform sites (Squarespace, Shopify, Wix, Webflow) handle updates and security for you, so maintenance is mostly content changes and occasional design refreshes.

WordPress sites need regular plugin, theme and core updates, backups and security monitoring. Skip these and you risk hacks and breakages.

DIY vs a care plan

You can do it yourself if you're comfortable logging in monthly to update and check things. Many businesses prefer a care plan where someone else handles updates, backups, uptime monitoring and a bank of time for small changes.

Hidden costs to watch

• Premium plugins or apps with annual licences
• Transaction fees on online stores
• Cheap hosting that slows your site and hurts SEO
• Emergency fixes when nobody's been maintaining the site

A realistic budget

For most small businesses, plan for a few hundred dollars a year in running costs, plus a care plan or your own time for upkeep. It's a small price compared with a site that's slow, insecure or out of date.

I offer WordPress care plans and build sites to be low-maintenance from the start. Ask me about yours.